An easy question abou clean installing win 7 & Vista

[d3v]

It's a sixth sense sort of thing, I guess. I have also noticed CrystalDiskInfo reporting a cautionary condition to a healthy one after wiping which further reinforces my belief that a slow wipe before a reformat improves harddrive performance. In technical terms I guess the wipe has reset the bad sector/s, or just relocated it.

I could well be technically incorrect, but personal experience drawn from OS reinstalls on probably 50-60 individual harddrives has created my habit of slow wiping before reformatting.

 

[ATTech]

In technical terms I guess the wipe has reset the bad sector/s, or just relocated it.

That's the only explanation I could come up with as well, which is why in the scenario you described, I would do a full format vs a quick one because disk checking is done during a full format.

 

[d3v]

That's the only explanation I could come up with as well, which is why in the scenario you described, I would do a full format vs a quick one because disk checking is done during a full format.

Is there a way to do this during the Win7 installation process becuase Win7 installs in a blink of an eye regardless of the hardrive capacity... can't see a full sector check being performed in such a short amount of time.

 

[red12049]

It's a sixth sense sort of thing, I guess. I have also noticed CrystalDiskInfo reporting a cautionary condition to a healthy one after wiping which further reinforces my belief that a slow wipe before a reformat improves harddrive performance. In technical terms I guess the wipe has reset the bad sector/s, or just relocated it.

I could well be technically incorrect, but personal experience drawn from OS reinstalls on probably 50-60 individual harddrives has created my habit of slow wiping before reformatting.

May I ask what exactly this "personal experience"consists of? Thanks

Rick

 

[ATTech]

Is there a way to do this during the Win7 installation process becuase Win7 installs in a blink of an eye regardless of the hardrive capacity... can't see a full sector check being performed in such a short amount of time.

Boot from DVD, repair computer, command prompt.

 

[SmithFamilyDesigns]

Alright, I'll let everyone in on this.

I don't know how widely known this is across this site, but I use it every other day at least.

From ANY windows setup that you have a full gui in the setup process (for example, vista/7 setup when selecting a disk), press shift+f10 and you get a command prompt. Its extremely helpful and saves a lot of time rebooting/restarting setup.

 

[d3v]

Alright, I'll let everyone in on this.

I don't know how widely known this is across this site, but I use it every other day at least.

From ANY windows setup that you have a full gui in the setup process (for example, vista/7 setup when selecting a disk), press shift+f10 and you get a command prompt. Its extremely helpful and saves a lot of time rebooting/restarting setup.

wow... had absolutely no idea about that! Thanks for the tip.

May I ask what exactly this "personal experience"consists of? Thanks

Rick

Well quicker performance is the most noticable effect I get from wiping a drive prior to reinstalling the OS, another equally noticeable effect is a quieter, less animated harddrive.
Another reason for my habit of wiping a hard drive before installing Windows is many years ago early on in my data recovery learning days I dug out an old Windows 2000 hard drive from my old 1999 Dell PC (which I had reformatted so many times that I lost count - again, learning) and ran some data recovery software to learn the ropes. Well I was SHOCKED to see bits and pieces of data (jpg's, wmv's, avi's, exe's, txt's, doc's, HTML's/ad infinum) that had survived format to format from between the year 1999 and 2003 either partially intact (half a JPG lol) or fully intact.... it was actually very sinister to see it all there and by logic I concluded that it can't be healthy or optimal for a harddrive to continue to store this stuff from format to format and so my habit was born from this experience.

 

[ATTech]

wow... had absolutely no idea about that! Thanks for the tip.



Well quicker performance is the most noticable effect I get from wiping a drive prior to reinstalling the OS, another equally noticeable effect is a quieter, less animated harddrive.
Another reason for my habit of wiping a hard drive before installing Windows is many years ago early on in my data recovery learning days I dug out an old Windows 2000 hard drive from my old 1999 Dell PC (which I had reformatted so many times that I lost count - again, learning) and ran some data recovery software to learn the ropes. Well I was SHOCKED to see bits and pieces of data (jpg's, wmv's, avi's, exe's, txt's, doc's, HTML's/ad infinum) that had survived format to format from between the year 1999 and 2003 either partially intact (half a JPG lol) or fully intact.... it was actually very sinister to see it all there and by logic I concluded that it can't be healthy or optimal for a harddrive to continue to store this stuff from format to format and so my habit was born from this experience.

Ehhh... that's how formatting works; it doesn't delete any data from the drive, it simply wipes the MFT and marks all the space as free. All those files just translate to a sequence of magnetic strips that represent 1's and 0's. The hard drive doesn't have a more difficult time reading and changing that sequence if it's 1's or 0's versus just all 0's.

 

[d3v]

Ehhh... that's how formatting works; it doesn't delete any data from the drive, it simply wipes the MFT and marks all the space as free.

I'm well aware of what a format does to a hard drive thank you very much.

 

[ATTech]

I'm well aware of what a format does to a hard drive thank you very much.

Then why were you shocked to see that data remained on a drive after it had been formatted a few times?

 

[d3v]

Then why were you shocked to see that data remained on a drive after it had been formatted a few times?

Becuase like I said it was in the early days of learning data recovery.

 

[ATTech]

Becuase like I said it was in the early days of learning data recovery.

So now that you know better, you should see that your habit had developed off of a flawed assumption.

 

[d3v]

So now that you know better, you should see that your habit had developed off of a flawed assumption.

My policy of wiping before reformat is not solely the result of that experience. What reason do you have to be attempting to put words in to my mouth here?
What do you do before reformats? Would you simply install an OS on a heavily-used 5+ year old machine without first wiping it? Do you run a chkdsk or SpinRite?

 

[red12049]

wow... had absolutely no idea about that! Thanks for the tip.



Well quicker performance is the most noticable effect I get from wiping a drive prior to reinstalling the OS, another equally noticeable effect is a quieter, less animated harddrive.
Another reason for my habit of wiping a hard drive before installing Windows is many years ago early on in my data recovery learning days I dug out an old Windows 2000 hard drive from my old 1999 Dell PC (which I had reformatted so many times that I lost count - again, learning) and ran some data recovery software to learn the ropes. Well I was SHOCKED to see bits and pieces of data (jpg's, wmv's, avi's, exe's, txt's, doc's, HTML's/ad infinum) that had survived format to format from between the year 1999 and 2003 either partially intact (half a JPG lol) or fully intact.... it was actually very sinister to see it all there and by logic I concluded that it can't be healthy or optimal for a harddrive to continue to store this stuff from format to format and so my habit was born from this experience.

If you haven't run controlled, repeatable performance tests, documenting every step, you have only anecdotal evidence.

Yesterday, in my shop, we replaced two hard drives, and installed/reinstalled six operating systems (including the two replaced drives), in addition to other miscellaneous work. If I had had to wipe/write/wipe those 4 used drives, I'd never get them out of the shop, and never have room for new work. All for anecdotal benefit?

Rick

 

[red12049]

My policy of wiping before reformat is not solely the result of that experience. What reason do you have to be attempting to put words in to my mouth here?
What do you do before reformats? Would you simply install an OS on a heavily-used 5+ year old machine without first wiping it? Do you run a chkdsk or SpinRite?

If I have reason to suspect a bad drive, I'll test it. Otherwise, if I am doing a clean install, I'll simply delete the partition and install.

BTW, chkdsk is for checking the file system, not the condition of the drive itself. There are better tools for that, Spinrite being one, albeit one that takes a long time. To be honest, if the drive is five years old and suspect, I'll recommend replacement, as it is reaching the end of it's lifespan anyway.

Rick

 

[ATTech]

My policy of wiping before reformat is not solely the result of that experience. What reason do you have to be attempting to put words in to my mouth here?

I haven't been putting words in your mouth and I'm not sure why you're getting so hostile. Your "gut" may be telling you that wiping first is better, but all logic based on the understanding of how a hard drives works contradicts that. Even if it did provide a little benefit, is such a marginal benefit really worth the extra few hours of work?

What do you do before reformats? Would you simply install an OS on a heavily-used 5+ year old machine without first wiping it? Do you run a chkdsk or SpinRite?

If I have reason to suspect the drive is having issues, I will find the appropriate way to test it. If it was failing, zero wiping isn't going to help anymore than a utility designed for integrity checking. The latter will take much less time.

 

[johnrobert]

If you want to spend some extra time checking a drive
Use disk regenerator forget wasting time on full format

If the drive is old dump it
Would you use a second hand parachute?

 

[Tony_Scarpelli]

If you want to spend some extra time checking a drive
Use disk regenerator forget wasting time on full format

If the drive is old dump it
Would you use a second hand parachute?

What constitutes old in your mind?

As part of our OS re installation we delete the partition, do the long format and then install the os. In most cases it hasn't been more than 10-15 minutes. There may be exceptions.

I feel this gives us a clue if the drive is beginning to fail. Our reinstallations can be 6 months old with new SATAII 6 gbps drives or they could be EIDE 4 year old drives. Sometimes on obviously new systems we go right to quick format. I have not detected a difference in failure rate between quick and full formats I guess its just a leftover procedure from earlier days.

If during the reinstallation we get any freezing, we take step back and do the full format, double check memory and heat issues. If we get a lot of bad/lost sectors we advise the client to put a new drive in before paying us to reload it.

 

[OldSchoolPC]

My .02 cents. A 500 GB hard drive costs $50 these days. How much is an hour of time? You tell me. I do quick format for on-site service. But if I have all the time in the world, or am multitasking I do a full format.

Wiping is POINTLESS in most cases, does nothing to increase speed any more than a format. If you wanna make sure that deleted data stays deleted even if somebody uses data recovery tools, then wipe the drive. I wipe ONLY for refurbished PCs.

As far as virus "coming back" from a wiped hard drive... Sorry, not possible. While the data is still there, it is essentially a dead virus. You could still use data recovery to bring back the virus but other than that it is completely neutered. It's just positive and negative polarity (zeros and ones) on the hard drive. End of story. Maybe it was a bios or firmware virus, or the thumb drive was infected.

Hope that didn't sound to angry. Rough day.